Stars Fall
by Lady Altair
Summary: A post DH AU in three parts. We all craft our own happy endings. Even in the best of all possible worlds, romances decay and constellations fall from the sky, but Remus Lupin will pin them back up in a world that has already forgotten what he sacrificed.
1. My Own Constellations

Stars

_I. My Own Constellations_  
A post-DH AU in three parts. Even in the best of all possible worlds, happy endings aren't for everyone. Long after the Battle of Hogwarts ends, Lavender Brown must fight for her own happy ending. Remus Lupin will help her, because no one has ever needed him like this.

Author's note: Another last post before I pick up and move. Part II is mostly done, too, but there could be a considerable delay in posting due to moving transatlantic and potentially sketchy dorm arrangements (as in, us lucky internationals might get stuck in temporary dorms minus the internet for orientation. horror.) This is my 'la-la-la-can't-hear-you' denial fic. And, before you ask, I don't hate R/T. I like them (in fanon) but I wanted to try something new. And this has been FUN.

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Nymphadora kicks him out of the house two weeks after Teddy's second birthday. Even as he walks away with nothing but his wand in his pocket, he thinks it is long overdue, and regrets that she had to be the one to demand the divorce and do something about the ugly rut they've run themselves into.

He just couldn't bear to hurt her so badly, so he hurt her in little ways every day until she'd had enough.

Remus Lupin doesn't really regret the end of his marriage, but he doesn't regret Nymphadora, either. They'd loved when it had mattered; it wasn't the greatest love, not the strongest or truest like the sorts in epic poems and storybooks, and neither of them had been starry-eyed over the other, but maybe that didn't happen to people who'd seen war. They'd clung to what was convenient, and it had been enough when times were hard.

There are angry words said (mostly by Nymphadora, but Remus has his moments, too), but they won't hate each other when the blood cools and the ink dries. They have a son to think of. In truth, neither of them thought they'd live to this point, where normal life resumes and the background roar of the war is not there to drown out their smaller disputes. Both of them prefer this ending; better to be two angry people abandoning a failed marriage than two cool corpses laying hand-in-hand on some battlefield. Not much for the storybooks, really, but most stories are tragedies anyway. Leave those endings to the tales they'll read to Teddy.

He works at a Muggle bookstore. If he pressed all his advantages, he could have employment in the wizarding world, but he feels comfortable around these people who don't know him, likes to have conversations with people who aren't in awe of what he has done, with people who don't know they should fear him for what he is. Little girls smile at him and men look him in the eye and women don't pull their coats tighter around their bodies when they see him. He likes feeling like a man, not a hero or a monster, because he is both in his own world.

He doesn't know her when she steps into the dusty little second-hand bookshop; she looks like any other lovely young muggle who wanders in out of the cold to browse. She's wearing a red wool coat over a black polo neck jumper and he can't see her scars because Lavender Brown saved her pretty face. It is the only part of her that is not rent with old wounds, the only part not ripped to ribbons by claws and fangs as she lay helpless on the stone floor with no one there to save her in the few seconds that really counted. She is nineteen years old and she covers her scars with cashmere.

Remus is puzzled when she smiles at him like she knows him, and he asks if there is something he can help her find.

"I've found _you,"_ she says, and laughs. He recognizes her at this, and he remembers her at thirteen, because it is that Lavender that he knows best.

Remus Lupin remembers Lavender Brown because her papers were poetry. They were not good papers by any conventional means; she didn't use facts or research, tending to write about what she thought and felt instead, and was markedly disorganized with her thoughts, but there was a fluid lyric quality in her words and sentence structure that made him give her passing marks even when the actual content of the paper might not have merited such a rating.

She'd come to him in his office after he assigned the final essay, determined to get a good mark, and he had walked her through it. She'd been triumphant when she showed him her second draft and he'd regretted ever showing her how to write the kind of flavorless, structured, perfect-mark essays that Hermione was so adept at creating.

It was after he resigned, after the word of what he was had spread round to the students, as he was packing up his meager belongings that she appeared again at his office door, parchment scroll in hand.

She had looked at him staidly, her eyes deep-blue in her small face. "I wanted to hand this in before you go. I worked very hard on it."

Astonished, he had taken it from her. He looked over it briefly as she stood there. It was perfect and bland and ordinary. "This is terrible," he said softly, and she looked heartbroken. "Forget everything I taught you," he instructed her, waving the rolled-up parchment in his hands.

Lavender had looked up at him, puzzled. "But…you're a good teacher. That's stupid, and it's _stupid_ you have to go. The only bad thing about you as a teacher is that you had to be gone those days every month and leave us with Professor Snape."

He couldn't help but smile at the little girl with her sweet oval face who was looking so indignant on his behalf. "I mean about what I taught you about writing. You're a lovely writer, Lavender, don't let any of the other teachers here kill that."

She had blushed a little, and then laughed. "Well, Professor Trelawney likes them, too…thank you." Lavender turned to go. "We all think you should stay, Professor Lupin." He sighed and she quickly added, "Just saying. You're a lovely teacher. Don't let any of the other students here kill that." She'd seemed a little appalled with her own daring, to speak so to a teacher, and he'd had to laugh. She'd laughed, too, before she turned and left, hesitating slightly by the door. "Bye, Professor Lupin. Good luck."

Good luck. He finds himself wondering abstractly if this still would've happened to her if he'd returned the wish before the door had shut behind her, that day years ago.

She's sadder than he remembers, but he can't be surprised at that. She's not a little girl anymore; she has lost a great deal, lived much in the six years since and it's wearing her on the edges.

He's a little in awe of this almost-woman who sits across from him in the dusty armchair, scarred little hands (there is a pretty diamond ring on her left hand and he wonders who gave it to her) peeking out of her coat sleeves. She's thinner and has lost the round, innocent prettiness of her youth. It's melted away to something structured and elegant, a bone-deep beauty that she'll probably carry with her even when her face is lined and her hair faded to silver.

When he asks her how she found him, she smiles and says "Harry." That's all he really says, just to ask her how and then…"Why?"

And she says, ever-so-simply, "Don't you want to be a wizard again? A human being?"

He is about to protest that he _is_, that he is both already, when the light glints off the gold registration tag Sealed around Lavender's wrist and he thinks of the same bracelet that Sirius and James finally managed to Hex off when they were all eighteen, that tag he still keeps among the detritus in the bottom of his trunk, Spellotaped to an essay on werewolves. And his protest dies, because he is not and she is not either and they both know it all too well. They are still _animals_, tagged and registered and licensed to live.

A little bit of fury creeps into her voice, just a little tinge of color in her soft tone. "It all just seems so unfairHow many of us got bit that day? We were fighting for them, and now they're telling me I can't work here and I can't live there and if I want to keep my wand I need to submit to monthly monitoring! I'm a _witch_ and I'm so miserably sick of being an anathema in the world I suffered and fought to save…it's sad how quickly people forget their gratitude."

There is something very sure and steady in her eyes and Remus Lupin has little beyond his son (every other week) and James's (who loves him, of course, but _needs_ him?). Lavender _needs_ him; he is respected as none of their kind are (or so she says…he shudders to think of some of the 'respect' he has known in the past months, now that everyone knows him and knows what he is.)

They work out of Lavender's grand house outside London; her parents', a muggle place for her witch mother (dead in an 'accident' at her Ministry job in November) and the Muggle millionaire she'd married (ruled suicide by the Muggle authorities, Imperius murder by the MLE). It is already full of people (_not animals_); some live there, denied any suitable housing in the wizarding community and too unfamiliar with Muggles to move in their world.

It is strange working with these _children…_these little girls he knew and taught (for they are nearly all pretty young women, with few exceptions. Greyback's preferences make themselves clear in this assembly), because they are not children anymore and they should be. They still call him Professor, most of them. He wishes he'd taught them better; he sometimes feels they are as they are because he failed them that year he taught.

They are not as scarred as Lavender, though some of them wear their scars on their faces. All their attacks were efficient; cruel and quick and meant to ruin rather than kill. A swipe of a clawed hand to incapacitate, a bite to the shoulder, move on. They, the ones who had lived through Greyback's attack, had all been able to bandage their wounds, grit their teeth, wail at the unfairness of fate, and stand again against the second onslaught.

Lavender didn't even see the second wave; she lay unconscious and very near death on dais. Remus remembers when Firenze carried Lavender into the Great Hall in the lull; he'd had to drive off Greyback to get at her, barely alive amidst the rubble of the Entrance Hall, the werewolf's soft, bleeding masterpiece of ruin.

Charlie Weasley comes around often and sets the girls (_not animals_) atwitter at his easy charm and dragon-handling ruggedness. There are stars in Lavender's eyes every time she sees him (Remus quickly learns that it's Charlie's ring on Lavender's finger), when he picks her up and kisses her in the entrance foyer she blushes and giggles and it is a little like that innocent laughter Remus remembers, when Parvati would shoot encouraging glances across the row and Lavender would giggle nervously before poking Ron in the back to ask him his opinion on her new hair ribbon.

She is lovestruck over this man and Remus loves to listen to her talk about him, because she is _so very happy_ and he is so very glad that this has not been stolen from her. This is starry-eyed love and it seems very precious. She tells him everything (_nearly_ everything, and what she leaves out would embarrass them both anyway) about it over Ministry petitions and insistent letters and he is fairly sure he has never really been in love, because he does not recognize her words and feelings as anything he has ever thought or experienced. Lavender loves to talk (she's older and sadder but she is still Lavender and she can still talk and gossip and laugh), and she loves very much to talk to him because he listens to her.

They're in Madame Malkin's and Lavender is pushing him to finish the last of his marshmallow-hot-fudge sundae from Florean's (_Because you're too skinny_, she informs him as she licks the last of her coconut-almond-fudge-ripple from the spoon, _and I won't have you in that meeting with the Werewolf-Registry woman looking like an underfed derelict) _when she temporarily abandons her quest to assemble him a suitable wardrobe to wander in the women's section.

Lavender doesn't like shopping here, or anywhere in Diagon Alley, preferring Muggle establishments. None of the Diagon Alley shops employ werewolves, and as a rule she refuses to spend money anywhere her kind is not welcome, but she overruled herself when Remus tried to accompany her to a Ministry hearing on the legality of werewolves in the Ministry workplace wearing his best (and very carefully patched) robes.

Remus watches the saleswoman goes wide eyed as Lavender orders suit after suit of robes, mostly for him but a few for herself. He hesitantly expresses concern for her expenditure as the dazed woman makes her way to the till to ring them up, but Lavender quickly and firmly quashes his protests. "I've got nothing else to do with all my money but try to make a reasonable life for people like us. You're my poster boy and I'll dress you how I please. Now you finish that sundae. You're skinny."

Remus has a flash of Lavender as the newest Mrs. Weasley (as she'll soon be) scolding over a pack of red-headed children. He thinks it's a very nice picture, until he remembers her polo-necks and mandarin collars and long sleeves in the heat of July, of those scars and that way she glances up at the moon every night like he does. And he remembers how sadly she told him that Charlie was having a hard time understanding that she couldn't give him a family like that, not the normal way. She looks troubled by this when she tells him, but she puts such feelings away soon enough.

He dances with her at her wedding and he wears the set of robes she thinks suits him best (a dark charcoal, because it's not as harsh as black). Her cream wedding dress (with long, fitted satin sleeves and a high collar to hide her scars) is trimmed in lavender, ribbons of the same color woven with tiny pink roses through her long brown hair. Lavender looks like a Victorian princess, beautiful and starry-eyed when Charlie snatches her away for another dance and Remus wonders how this happens to people, because it seems so easy and simple when he looks at it from this distance. She hugs him goodbye before she and Charlie leave for Greece, smiles brilliantly at him and kisses him on the cheek.

He doesn't notice that there are no stars in Charlie's eyes until years later, when he sees them. Charlie is supposed to be in Romania for two weeks, and Lavender mopes around Remus' office, straightening things and reorganizing the cabinets and pushing food on him as she coaches him on the answers he's supposed to give in an upcoming interview (she writes all the answers, he just says them for her).

Remus takes Teddy to Nymphadora's for a Sunday afternoon visit because the little boy misses his mum. Charlie is in Nymphadora's kitchen, kissing Remus' ex-wife while he still wears the wedding band Lavender gave him. He is starry-eyed and Remus wants to kill him because Lavender wears her stars for him and he is _stomping them out_. Teddy almost understands, so he edges out of the kitchen as his father condenses into rage. He doesn't trust himself to speak much, so he only tells Lavender's husband, "You tell her or I will." He says that but he doesn't know if he could ever tell her because it will demolish what happiness she has (and so rightly deserves, because she is kind and generous and has somehow become his dearest friend).

It takes three days for Charlie to tell Lavender and every minute of her pretty happiness infuriates Remus because he knows it is about to be crushed. Charlie 'returns home' on a Thursday afternoon and Lavender is so thrilled to see him (like always, _like always_) and Remus can only sit in the parlor he uses as an office, blindly staring at another petition as he waits. It doesn't take long, and Lavender is quietly closing his office door behind her. Her stars are running down her sharp cheeks in streams; another love broken. Remus mourns this more than he ever mourned his own failed love; he never wore the stars in his eyes for Nymphadora. Lavender wore constellations for Charlie Weasley and now she is standing, pressed against his door, choking because he has ripped them all down from the sky.

"I'm sorry," she sobs, gracefully sliding down onto floor, curling her back and covering her face with her hands. "I couldn't make it anywhere else," she manages. "And I don't want anyone to see me cry like this."

He sits down next to her on the floor and she collapses against his shoulder, crying herself hollow with heartbreak until she has exhausted every reserve of energy and the afternoon has faded into evening. She struggles to her knees and he jumps up to help her. She can walk herself to her room, she insists, but he goes with her anyway to make sure she gets there and then transfigures the sofa in his office to a camp bed so he can be there when she wakes up.

As he curls up and tries to sleep, he wonders when he stopped being anyone.

Seamus Finnegan shows up at Lavender's door the next morning with bruised knuckles and an ugly, stolid look on his face that suggests his friend's husband is currently in a far worse state. Lavender's eyes widen and she opens her mouth to scold him, but the words get lost somewhere and she can only say thank you. Parvati arrives later in the day, canceling dinner plans with her fiancé to bring takeaway Chinese and ice cream. Lavender picks at the food and Remus retreats to his office while the two sit on the sofa in silence until Parvati has to go. When he goes to check on her, she pulls him down next to her and he watches the television with her late into the night until he realizes she's fallen asleep against the arm of the sofa. He thinks she's cried herself to sleep, but her face is dry.

She only cried in his office, that one single day when Charlie leaves her. She's not all right by any means; she's lost her enthusiasm with food (and for werewolves, with elevated metabolisms and too many days sick off the necessary evil of Wolfsbane, enthusiasm for food is the only way of maintaining weight) and he's now the one having to press ice cream and takeaway on her, because in just a few weeks she's grown alarmingly thin. If he thought her sad when she found him that day in the bookshop, she is hollow now. He finds her, sometimes, just standing in the kitchen or in her office or in the hallway, her eyes dull and hopeless as if she has no idea what to do with herself anymore.

He goes out shopping with her, taking her out of the house while Seamus and Daphne Greengrass unceremoniously toss all of Charlie's belongings out the window and down into the garden (Seamus later informs Remus and Lavender that he decided to ask the former Slytherin girl to marry him after she nailed, in his words, "that bloody fucker" straight in the head with one of his broken Snitches as he collected his belongings.)

It's the day before the full moon and Lavender spends money like it's going out of style. He only just stops her from trading in her (rarely used and year-old) Mercedes for a brand new Jaguar. She comes home with enough shopping bags as it is; he doesn't quite understand the what muggle money is worth in relation to wizarding currency but the stores she shops in look ridiculously high-end and all the numbers seem quite staggering. To be fair, she needs the clothing; she's dropped quite a bit of weight and everything she owns hangs off her, but Remus would rather take her to Florean's and fatten her back into her size eights. No woman of her height should weigh any less than nine stone, in his opinion, and he doubts she's making eight.

Lavender has never spent the full moon with any of the other werewolves who share her house. They all share a large, warded suite of rooms on the third floor, but Lavender locks herself in another suite in the cellar. When Remus offers to stay with her, he doesn't expect her to agree, but she does.

The unpleasant Wolfsbane does its work and he can still see the sad humanity in her amber wolf's eyes as she curls up on a plush rug and rests her head on her paws. She's very pretty, even as a wolf, more brown in her coat than his own grey. And she's still Lavender; he tries to leap up onto her cream-duvet-covered bed and she barks at him in reprimand, very human disgust somehow managing to write itself across her long canine face.

In the morning, when the moon sets and they pick their aching human bodies off the floor and pull on pajamas, he has some notion of propriety and makes to curl up on the chaise in the corner. Lavender collapses onto the bed and rolls her eyes, using what strength she has to reach up and grasp him by the shirtsleeve, pulling down on the bed and rolling over to the other side of the giant bed. "When you turn tonight, keep your paws off the bed. I'm allergic to us," she mumbles before falling asleep.

She's setting down a tray when he wakes up, tea and toast and Wolfsbane, which they both shoot, Lavender a little more hesitantly. Lavender's still not got over the dreadful taste; she gags at the bitterness while Remus merely twists his mouth in distaste. She pushes toast on him and puts too much sugar in his tea (well, too much sugar in a conventional sense—he likes it syrupy sweet). _Calories, _she insists, and he returns the favor with a huge bar of chocolate he had hidden in his robes. This is more interesting to her than it would have been before and she eats her half slowly. Moonrise isn't for a few hours, so Lavender digs through the bedding and finds the remote control. They watch television, listlessly sprawled amongst feather bedding.

"Thank you for talking me out of the car yesterday. That was ridiculous," she says during an advertisement, starting Remus out of his exhausted haze (and he rather likes the television, he usually reads during these useless, weary hours but this is much less taxing). She sounds like she wants to say something more and quiet overlays the chatter of the television.

"My dad used to do this. On my mum. Cheat," she says after a while. "He did it a lot, and he always came back just _ever-so-sorry_ about it. He'd beg her to forgive him and promise to change and that it wouldn't ever happen again and he, oh, he loved her so much. And then she'd go out and spend his money to punish him. Like he cared about that. He'd just do it again, and every time was the last time she'd forgive him." She settles back into the cocoa-brown-cased pillow, still watching the television but not really seeing.

"And when Charlie told me he'd been cheating—God, with your ex-wife!—I just stood there, waiting. Waiting for him to beg forgiveness, to promise he'd ended it and that he'd never do it again and that he loved me. _Just this one time,_ I was telling myself the whole time he was talking; just this one time I'd forgive him, because he wouldn't do it again. He wasn't going to be my dad and I wasn't going to be my mother." She's still not looking at him; her eyes are fixed intently on the screen. "And he isn't my dad—he never wanted me to forgive him, he doesn't want me at all anymore." There's a very long, anguished pause and when she continues on, her words are measured and tight, carefully cut away from the misery he's sure is swirling in her stomach. "He _loves_ her and I think he always has. I think I've just been this huge waste of time for him, just a way of biding his time till she got over _you._" There's accusation, just a tinge of it, in the last syllable, and he knows an illogical little part of her is angry with him.How dare they end their marriage, how dare he allow Nymphadora to move on?

She finally curls onto her side, facing him. Her long brown hair pools into a tangle underneath her head. "These wartime romances are not working out for anyone, are they?" she comments, an ugly, sad smile twisting painfully across her pallid face.

Remus feels honor-bound to disagree. "Harry and Ginny are quite happy," he points out.

"Hero gets the girl. Doesn't count—Harry _deserves_ that happy ending." He very much wants to ask her why she didn't merit such a reward (because Lavender is valiant in her own way and she's _still _fighting), but he can only think to bring up another example.

"Ron and Hermione, then." Remus knows he's erred when a stricken look ghosts over Lavender's face.

She manages to speak, but it's a little strained. "Doesn't count either. They've been in love with each other since they were eleven years old. That falls into the category of 'Childhood Destiny', not 'Wartime Romance.'" There's a sad, lonely bitterness in her voice again, and he desperately wishes he hadn't brought Ron into the conversation. Very quietly, she wonders aloud, "Why don't we all get something like that?"

He hasn't an answer for her.

She flips over onto her other side and laughs a little bitterly to herself. "So, which Weasley next?" she muses. "I've gone through two, and both have them have tossed me over for the loves of their lives. I must good luck for them in that regard. Not much good for me, though. 'Beware a red-haired man', indeed."

Remus wants to comfort her, but he's not really sure how because he's always been awkward with women. He thinks it would be too familiar of him to touch her, though that is his first intent; they're already in bed together and she'll probably think he's trying to start something. She doesn't say anything more, and they're quiet until she checks the clock and pulls him out of the bed right before moonrise. She's quite insistent that neither of them pollute the bed with allergens.

She turns around to face the wall as she peels off her red-silk pyjama top (she could afford to rip through a new pair of pyjamas every night of the full moon, but she likes these) and before he can turn away he catches a look of the marks ripping down her bony back, purple and red and ugly in the twilight. She wraps herself in a big blanket and sits on the floor in front of the empty fireplace, staring into it as though it were offering some great answer. He doesn't bother her, shedding his own clothing and wrapping up in another blanket before settling onto the chaise.

A little later, as a wolf, she merely curls up on the plush rug with that achingly human sadness in her wolf's eyes. Remus noses her gently and she doesn't snap at him, so he curls up next to her and rests his head on hers. Touch and comfort is so much easier to give and receive in this form, somehow.

It's a terrible, cruel time that Charlie chooses to abandon her. Just as Remus is helping Lavender fill out the familiar forms (sometimes her hand shakes too violently to hold a quill, but her parchments aren't tearstained) the wedding invitations pour in. Ron and Hermione are to be wed in early December, with Parvati and Terry only a few weeks later on New Years'. It seems almost torturous that Lavender must bear witness to so many happy beginnings while she is picking up in the ruins of her own marriage.

The worst is Harry and Ginny's wedding in September, barely two months after the dissolution of Lavender's marriage. Ginny, a particular friend of Lavender's (he was somehow surprised by this friendship, but Lavender quietly tells him that it was hard not to love those people she suffered with, hid with during her last year with the Carrows) visits one day and kindly tells Lavender that she needn't be a bridesmaid, needn't attend at all, really, if it will be too painful, but Lavender waves her off.

He can tell she's rethinking her dismissal of Ginny's offer as they process down the aisle after the ceremony, behind Ron and Hermione walking arm-in-arm as best man and bridesmaid. Lavender's face is a study in joy for her friend, but her grip on his arm tightens as they pass the row where Charlie sits with Nymphadora and Teddy, who is fidgeting with suppressed boredom after his brief stint as ring bearer. Barely two months have passed, but Nymphadora is noticeably pregnant and there is a pretty diamond ring on her left hand; everyone draws their conclusions and looks at Lavender pityingly throughout the reception until she disappears from her seat beside his when he goes to get her a drink.

He hears Charlie and Nymphadora arguing as he passes them in his search for her. Remus pauses only long enough to hear Nymphadora, nearly in tears, snap at Charlie. "I told you I shouldn't have come, Charlie. We've hurt that poor woman enough; she didn't need to see me here like this." There is sick guilt in her voice, and Remus remembers why he cared so much for her and some of his anger (with her, at least—he would still gladly join Seamus Finnegan in beating the stuffing out of Charlie) fades.

He finds Lavender in a coat room, staring blankly and picking at the dense lace of her long sleeves. When he asks he what she's doing (stupid, silly question) she answers quite simply, "I'm not crying." And this, for her at the moment, is most certainly doing something. The effort of it is showing in the tightness of her face her trembling hands. He stays with her until she can relax her face from the tight mask, and then he takes her back.

He dances with her until Seamus steals her away for a dance when his fiancée disappears (Lavender finds Daphne a little while later, off in the loo being ill, cursing, in her words, "that bloody Irish fucker" and wondering if she should move her wedding date up by a few months so she can walk down the aisle instead of waddle.) He bribes Teddy with a later bedtime next week and another cherry soda right this minute to ask Lavender to dance and she smiles something that's almost genuine as she accepts, her eyes flashing over at him.

He takes her home after the wedding couple leaves (she's had a little too much to drink and nearly Splinches herself) and she seems so sad to see him go, because the house is huge and quiet and dark behind her. He is almost afraid she is going to ask him in and that he will have to refuse (because he will refuse, he _will_, he tells himself, she's lonely and drunk and doesn't need _that_ from him) but she doesn't, just smiles at him as he Disapparates back to his little cottage, which is sad and empty without his son.

She gets better, and sooner than he really expected. She throws herself into a Quidditch campaign for Alicia Spinnet, who has been banned from the Kestrels (and every other Quidditch team) by a decree from the Department of Games and Sports.

Of all the campaigns to which Lavender has dedicated herself, this is perhaps the most successful. She is after every official, captain, and team owner with a passion, letters and appearances and articles in every publication she can manage. It takes years, and Lavender is nearing thirty when the ban on werewolves in the Quidditch leagues is rescinded.

Lavender cries so violently at Alicia's first match that she has to sit down. An emerald-haired Teddy, ten years old and nearly sick from excitement at his first professional Quidditch match, jumps up onto the seat next to her and throws his arms around her neck, letting go only when the crowd cheers madly as Alicia makes the first goal.

Lavender bursts into tears all over again after a brief pause of watching the boy cheer, his hair flashing yellow to green and back again, this time wrapping her arms around Teddy's father, victory and pride shining through her tears as she looks at him (she's in especially high heels today and she's just barely taller than him). "We've done something today," she says quietly and Remus almost can't hear her over the roar of the crowd.

"And we'll do something tomorrow," he promises her. She smiles so widely and it doesn't matter that Charlie Weasley tore down her stars; Lavender Brown will make her own constellations.

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I will be very far away from home for an entire year. Reviews are love. :)


	2. Outside of Here and Now

Stars Fall

Part II: Stars Take Time

Author's Note: I'm exhausted and sick of university bureaucracy (because where they send you is NEVER where you need to be and no one knows anything about this time table discrepancy or that, hey, that class you're registered in doesn't have a time because it's cancelled and we forgot to tell anyone but you still need to file paperwork to drop the module that doesn't exist!) so I had a bit of a mental holiday with this. I really like this part, and I'm well on my way through Part III

If you've got a spare moment, I would adore a quick review. I'm getting a lot of alerts and favorites on this and not many reviews...tell me why you like it enough to favorite it, so I can keep it up! And on that note, I leave you, because the pub calls my name and today has been bureaucratic hell.

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After that match, Teddy Lupin speaks of nothing but Quidditch and Lavender Brown. He loves his father's friend with all the simple loyalty of a child to a woman who's given him sweets and introduced him to Disney films and whom he has known ever since he can remember (although Remus is sure the Quidditch matches they've just started taking him to don't hurt) although he confides in his father one night after a match that he can't talk about her at Mum's house because it makes Mum and Charlie sad and angry.

Remus can see Teddy mirroring Lavender when they go out together; a number of comments from (Muggle) strangers on how much Teddy resembles "your beautiful mother, dear, it's simply remarkable" bring Lavender some indefinable between elation and despair. She has to duck into a toilet at the shops one day after a well-meaning woman congratulated her on her handsome, polite little son. Remus and Teddy pretend they don't notice her slightly pinked eyes. Remus talks to his son that night, and Teddy solemnly agrees to limit his magic after seeing its rather painful consequence.

Remus watches Lavender sometimes when she is with his son. She is nearly flawless; she loves the little boy as much as Teddy loves her, but there is a little wistfulness in her eyes when Teddy shows off the new face he's figured out how to make (in a literal sense that only a young Metamorphmagus could manage) or his new favorite hair color (most of which are neon-bright and nearly blinding).

There's a lot of Nymphadora in his face(s) and Remus thinks it must be very confusing for Lavender to love his son when Teddy resembles so much the woman that Charlie has always loved more than he ever loved her. Lavender is unfailingly kind and generous with his son (perhaps a little too much; there are a few too many Weasley Wheezes managing their way into Teddy's hands and, while he first suspects his son's stepfather, Lavender always looks entirely too innocent when he mentions them) and Remus cannot help but remember how he imagined her as a Weasley mother.

It seems like a terrible loss that this woman will never be a mother; he sees the terrible grief in her indigo eyes when she holds Ginny and Harry's Lily in her arms. She is awe of the delicate little person she's holding when Ginny first deposits the little girl in her arms, but Remus watches her with his new goddaughter, watches that awe sink to despair, longing for this for herself. He's not the only one who sees it; Ginny notices. There's understanding in her eyes and she hugs Lavender a little longer than necessary when she and Remus leave Lily's christening.

Teddy Lupin has as big a send-off as any eleven-year-old could hope for. Charlie and Nymphadora are there, of course, with their own two children. Andromeda is there as well, Harry and Ginny, Ron and Hermione, with all their respective children. It's a madhouse and Teddy seems almost too eager to leave as he submits to hugs and kisses from his mother and father and grandmother, but just as he turns to board the train, he abruptly reverses and quickly hugs Lavender as well.

His cottage feels horribly empty without his son. It's different than the every-other-week arrangement he had with Nymphadora when Teddy was not in school. This is big, permanent emptiness, with only the too-infrequent owls to comfort him. He spends a lot of time with Lavender, who's now on a crusade to have it all off at once and have werewolf classification changed from 'creature' to 'being'. Even after all they've accomplished, this seems impossible and even Lavender seems to recognize it.

She's dating some American Quidditch player she met when she and Remus brought Teddy to the World Cup in Australia, the US vs. Japan. John Harlan is tall and sweet and awkward and reminds Remus terribly of Fabian Prewett (who in turn reminds him of Ron Weasley) and that makes him a little uncomfortable. Lavender seems suspiciously uninvolved in the relationship, and has since John approached her at the press affair following the American win and showed her the bite scars along his forearms, pronouncing his admiration for her work in werewolf equality and asking if he could take her out to dinner sometime.

He's at her mansion (empty now of all residents save its owner, since Lavender had it made illegal to deny housing to werewolves who could prove Wolfsbane-compliance) helping her draft an article that Luna Lovegood wants to publish in the Quibbler when John Floos her house to say he's in Ireland for the weekend and that she should join him. She, sprawled out on the monstrous Oriental rug in front of the granite fireplace, tells him she's got an important meeting with the Head of the Aurors to discuss something and she's just too busy, sorry.

Lavender doesn't sound particularly sorry and Remus, who knows their schedule by rote, knows immediately she's lying and after John's disappointed face disappears from the fireplace, he calls her on it. She shrugs noncommittally in a gesture that is obnoxiously teenaged. He is somehow suddenly angry with her treatment of this poor kid because he's obviously taken with her and he gets the very terrible feeling she's using him as a stand-in for the Weasleys.

He tells her as much and Lavender is so angry he thinks she's going to toss him out of her house. He leaves on his own, still furious on the behalf of this poor boy she's punishing for no misdeed but for the misfortune of his resemblance to the two Weasleys who had so long ago done wrong by her.

He has to admit to himself, as he's making himself dinner (and he's not done that in such a long time, cooked for just one, because he's eaten with either Lavender or Teddy or both for so many years, that he makes too much) that he's probably been too harsh on her. Who is he to judge, when he thinks back on all the little cruelties he dealt out to Nymphadora?

It's not his affair, really. How she goes about in her relationships is none of his concern and he's _her _friend, after all, not John Harlan's. He tries to tell himself that, but it doesn't really stick. What he really hates about the situation is how angry she still is. He hasn't seen that anger in her for so long that he can't help but be shocked with that ugly sort of venomous indifference she's directing at the poor man. He wonders if Lavender is still in love with Charlie, and the thought settles uncomfortably in the pit of his stomach. It's been _years,_ and if she still loves him, then he doubts she'll ever really stop.

It's the longest feud they've ever had. It lasts all of five days and then Lavender shows up at his cottage to shout at him for a little bit about minding his own business and staying out of her relationships and, 'oh yes, maybe you were right and I've ended it with John.'

She manages to admit the truth of his words while yelling as though she were infallible and in this aspect alone (for he has never had any reason to compare two such unlike people, love them both though he may) she so suddenly resembles Sirius that he cannot help but forgive her. He would've done it anyway; he loves her (in friendship's strange, particular way) as he's loved no one since those clear and happy days he spent at Hogwarts with James and Sirius and Peter. It's a strange sort of kinship between them, so totally unlike his love for Harry or Teddy, but it seems very precious.

She brought Florean's, and after she stops shouting (he knows she's really berating herself, so he lets her raised voice go) they go in together and eat chocolate-chocolate-fudge-chocolate-chunk ice cream on his sofa and talk about trivialities.

When she takes off her coat later that night (he's been wondering why she's been keeping on her coat in his warm cottage) and she wears only a vest-top, he stares and she lets him. He's never had a look at her scars but for the quick, accidental glance when she pulled her pajamas off that one moon he spent with her; from the red-blooming bandages over her ruined, bleeding flesh at eighteen to the careful armor of her beautiful clothing at thirty, she has cautiously guarded herself in a way he knows she never would have, had her skin been the beautiful, unblemished ivory she'd once worn.

He thinks she's shaming herself before him; some ill-guided contrition for her words, but when he looks away and fumbles for a blanket to give her, her hand is soft and gentle on his face, turning it back to look at her. Remus stares into her face because it is the one perfection in the mess of her scars.

"Am I so terrible to look at?" Lavender asks him softly, a little fear in her dark blue eyes.

"I love to look at you," he confesses before he quite knows what he's saying. And it's true; he's been very lonely without her even these five short days.

"But not like this," she says, more of a fact than a question. He opens his mouth to protest, even though he still can't bring himself to look down and let her show him so much of what she's so carefully kept hidden, but there's an understanding in her voice (a very terrible, sad understanding) when she tells him "I don't like to look at myself like this, either. Sometimes I wake up and forget until I walk in front of a mirror. And then I remember and they start hurting again and I cry and that battle might've been yesterday but for the grey in my hair."

He can't stand to hear that, so he pulls back to survey her. He wants to find some words to comfort her and he can't mean them until he sees all (_or most,_ he blushingly thinks as the grey of her vest slides into his vision) of it.

And he really can't. He has scars but they cannot compare to these; even that degree of destruction pales before what is torn across Lavender's arms and chest. They're catastrophic, so livid and angry-looking, even after more than a decade; curse wounds never heal.

He remembers her crying in the hospital wing in those long days afterwards, when he hung around those rows of beds to comfort the girls (and the two boys) who Fenrir had changed. They'd all been less seriously injured, well enough to talk and sit up. Lavender had been so brutally ripped apart that Poppy Pomfrey had had to keep her unconscious for days with well-timed sleeping draughts, but sometimes the potions would wear off a little bit early for no reason at all and she would wake just enough to feel, and her quiet, weak cries of pain and confusion drifted through the Hospital Wing until someone was kind enough to dose her again. He's had nightmares where she cries like that again, weak and confused and dying.

"They're terrible," she says, dropping her hand away from his face to rest in her lap.

"Yes," he agrees hesitantly, because he's always been the most wretched liar, "But they're only scars." His hand has found its way to her arm; the scars don't even feel like skin under his fingertips. They're tough and thick and wrong, but they're Lavender and they are less ugly than some of the traits he has recognized in people he still calls friends. Everyone has little pieces of ugliness about them; Lavender just wears hers in a more literal sense.

"I just get tired of holding them all to myself," she says after a long while, taking the blanket that Remus had reached for, still folded over the back of the sofa. She pauses again. "I didn't want Charlie to be the only man who'd ever seen them anymore. You're more to me now than he ever truly was, no matter what I thought." She puts her coat back and leaves him at that and he really doesn't know what to think.

He's really not sure how he's here. It seems very surreal, to lay in bed beside her (even though it's not for the first time, it's different now) remembering how her eyes fluttered closed when he moved and how his name (she's said it so many times in the past fifteen years) sounds so very different when she's saying it (whispering it, breathing it more than saying it, really) like this. He's not sure how it happened, because it seemed (it _was_) just yesterday when he thought of how he loved her and he could only think of Sirius and James and Peter and how he had loved _them_. It had seemed the same (just a day ago), and now it is so very different because he can't imagine wanting these things with any of them (he cringes a little bit, _absolutely not, _and hopes very fervently that Sirius and James do not have some super dead-person power to hear his thoughts, because someday he will never hear the end of it.

He found her sitting alone in the former campaigning workspace, a large parlor, still filled with the dozen empty desks. Werewolves have rights (some, anyway, enough) and it's getting hard to encourage people to dedicate time to this when they could be out working the jobs they've fought for and living in the houses they've earned; it's okay to be a beast and not a being, for most it's just a word. It's losing momentum and Lavender is finding herself with less and less to do.

7 October, 2013 is Lavender's thirty-fourth birthday and she's sitting on top of an abandoned desk, an unopened, beribboned bottle of expensive gin at her side (Remus loathes gin, but Lavender likes 'a little bit of Christmas tree' at the end of her drinks). She smiles at him when he wanders in, the lines around her eyes and mouth crinkling up.

She's not so young anymore; still very beautiful, of course (he remembers thinking she would age very elegantly, and he can see it now in the silver threading her chocolate-brown hair and the thin lines around her indigo eyes) but the lives they lead are rough. She takes care of herself, though, and looks far better at thirty-four than he did at _twenty_-four.

He wishes her a happy birthday, casting a teacherly glance at the bottle and then back at her. Lavender laughs, picking up the bottle of gin. "I've not had a drop! Parvati sent me this. I think that means that her little darlings are driving her to drink and she's fulfilling her desires vicariously through me." Just the smallest flash of sadness darts across her eyes; the mention of Parvati and Terry's three "little darlings", compounded with her birthday, is a little sobering.

"I just wanted to sit in here for a while." He slides up onto the desk next to her, feeling rather juvenile for all his fifty-four years. "Remember a little bit. It feels like it's over." There's a definite sadness in her voice now.

"We've done a lot, Lavender," he reminds her gently. "People are content with what they have. Whether they're down in the books as a beast or a being doesn't really stop them from living a reasonable life. 'Reasonable life', isn't that what you told me you wanted for us?"

"I know," she says mournfully, resting her head on his shoulder. She's wearing a new perfume today, probably another gift. "It's just…this has been _my_ life for such a long time. It's all I've really had and I don't know what to do now that it's over."

"You can do whatever you like," he insists gently.

"No, I can't," she whispers, and he knows exactly what she really _wants _to do (have a child, be a mother, make a family to call her own) but she _can't_, that life has been taken from her.

"You should travel," he suggests, breezily as though he hasn't the slightest idea she's mourning (again, again, she's always mourning) what she can't have. "You haven't had a holiday since…" He stops himself, but the words have said themselves in the silence.

She doesn't seem particularly upset, thankfully, when she fills in the blanks. "Since my honeymoon, yes. Greece is lovely, I'd like to go back. Or go to the Caribbean. Or Japan. Or Australia." She laughs, thinking for a moment. "Maybe I should. There're a lot of places I've never seen that I'd like to."

Hopping off the desk with considerably less ease than she had at thirteen (he remembers scolding her, she likes to sit on desks and not in chairs because it makes her tall) she smiles at him wryly. Heels have been kicked off somewhere, she's barefoot; he forgets how little she is without them and he thinks that's her intention, that people forget. Even so, one would be hard pressed to look at this woman and call her small.

"I think I need a life here, first, before I go flitting around the world to escape from it. How do I do that?" Her head tilts sideways, and he wonders if she's always had this mannerism, because it seems so oddly canine.

"I'm not quite sure," he admits.

She ponders for a minute, and then leans in and pulls up his wrist to check his watch (she gave it to him for his fiftieth birthday and he wears it because she does this often). "I think it might start with getting away from takeaway dinners and eating them on the sofa. Let's go out tonight," she says firmly, straightening his tie (he's never looked neater; Lavender doesn't hold with shabbiness in any form). "We can celebrate what we've won. What do you think?"

There's a moment there, in between when he's thinking and when he's not, when everything is perfectly clear. He can barely help himself; she's right there and he loves her and suddenly it _isn't_ like how he loved James and Peter and Sirius (that thought jumps into his head just as his mouth meets hers and he nearly bites her in surprise).

She has lipstick on; he can feel it smearing onto his mouth as hers drops open a little in shock. If he were thinking, he'd pull away in an instant and apologize and run for the door, but he's _not_ thinking for those few seconds, just long enough.

When he pulls away, appalled with his own daring and embarrassed (he's _fifty-four_, not fifteen!, there's a ridiculously young-looking grin on her face and pink smears of lipstick around her mouth. He's so afraid for a moment, but she's already reaching her hand out to his mouth to wipe at the pink smears with her thumb. "When you go for the lipstick, Remus, remember: Dior Addict in Rose Vision. It's definitely your color."

He's speechless, looking down at her as she wipes away the lipstick. Her fingertips are very soft on his mouth and his mind is blank but for that and her starry indigo eyes.

She draws away with a pretty, teasing smile that she has _never ever_ used on him before (he's seen it, a more innocent version at thirteen for Ron and Seamus, at twenty for Charlie, but never for him). He wants so badly to reach out and draw her back that he's scaring himself. His mind is venturing into places that…well, he _has _had some thoughts like this (it's hard not to; beautiful young women don't often smile at and touch him like she does) but somehow it's very different when she's looking at him like _that_ with a wax-pink halo around her mouth. "Go get dressed for dinner. We're going out." With another teasing, happy look, she turns and pads out of the parlor. "No lipstick!" she calls back from the hallway, just a voice echoing through the open French doors. Her voice is drifting, quiet; he can hear her running up the steps as she calls back, "I'll put some on you later!"

She was not shamed to show him her scars that night weeks before, but she shies from him when tries to touch her that night after she's led him into her bedroom. He doesn't need to ask; she explains as she grips the fabric of her clothing about her as though it were adamantine armor. "It's silly, I know, you've already seen most of it…but I didn't really care if you thought I was pretty before, I was just your friend," she whispers in the harsh light from the ceiling fixtures.

"You're still my friend," he says, hoping to sound confident and reassuring but he's never been good at employing such a tone in his voice.

When he switches off the lights, he doesn't imagine that Lavender will ever let him see her in full light. She still feels the loss of that beauty she had as a girl; she misses that chocolate-curled English Rose who sobbed into flawless white arms in the library when Ron Weasley dashed down her first awkward, childlike love. He can (and he will) tell her how beautiful he thinks she is every time the thought crosses his mind (which is often; he's a still a little in awe of this woman) but that will never heal these scars, still livid pink and fresh-looking nearly twenty years later, will never calm the unease or banish the careful caution evident in Lavender's conscientious dressing.

She flinches a little as he reaches a hand up to smooth across the ruined skin on her stomach but he gathers her up against him as smoothly as he can (which isn't very, he fumbles and stumbles over his words as he tells her how beautiful she is and how much he loves her). In clear moment he thinks to guide one of her hands to the furrow in his shoulder—dealt by Dolohov and so close that it might have killed him had he not had his wits about him at just the right moment—and the other to the webbing of silvery, thin scars across his chest. He almost says 'we all have scars' but he doesn't need the words.

It doesn't really change much, and that feels odd. Nymphadora changed _everything_ and he feels that the world should roll under his feet because he slept with (loves, _loves)_ Lavender Brown. It doesn't, really. She's still his friend; they still eat ice cream on her sofa and talk, she still jumps out of bed at first light to bathe and primp (that he's now sharing her bed doesn't mean he gets to see her looking, in her words, 'a sight' but he's caught her still abed a few times and he doesn't think there's ever a time where she's not beautiful).

That he can now reach down and kiss her, or that she can drape herself over his shoulders and kiss his neck while he's at his desk, or that he makes her giggle like a teenager (he truly tries hard not to think about anything to do with the Lavender he knew at thirteen, because he didn't love that girl like he loves this woman and it feels wrong to remember her like that, so very young and new while he was already old and broken) and sigh like the grown woman she is now in the very small hours of morning spent in their bed…they're not really changes at all, just small, (_wonderfully) _pleasant additions to what was already there.

He thinks this is how it's supposed to be; that love shouldn't flip you upside down, ransack your flat and shake out all your drawers. Maybe that's for some people, but he likes this friendship with all the little, gradual additions. And maybe some people would regret those fifteen years spent as friends as wasteful, but he doesn't imagine he'd have loved her any other way but this. For him, stars take time, and that's something he never had before.

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Thanks for clicking in and reading, I appreciate it so very much. If you've got a spare moment, review! They are a day-brightener (and I live in Northern England of the perpetual overcast sky, I need it!) 


	3. Bright and Unfading

Part III, _Bright and Unfading_

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(Reposted 21-10-2007 for a few minor corrections)

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No one seems particularly surprised when they show up to Luna's January wedding/fancy dress party together. The biggest fuss thrown is by Luna herself, resplendent in a mad, beautiful concoction of white feathers and glitter (to honor the Sparkle Feathered Iciclarn, the creature she was chasing when she met Rolf) and not over the fact that they walk in hand-in-hand. She is only concerned with the state of their clothing (new winter dress robes; beautiful designer clothing, and nothing at all like some of the madness the other wedding guests are sporting).

"Where's your fancy dress? You don't look particularly fancy…have the Bunglebummers stolen your party spirit?" she asks in the receiving line, mildly as ever. Lavender just slips out two pair of wooly white ears and slides them first onto Remus' head, then onto her own.

"It's wool," she explains to Luna, rubbing her hand down the fabric of Remus' dress robes in such a familiar manner that he feels a blush spread to his cheeks. "We're wolves in sheep's clothing." She points needlessly to the little sheep ears now sticking up from the top of her head. Luna collapses into laughter (almost literally; Rolf has to catch her).

Somehow, a picture of them kissing ends up in the Quibbler (he isn't usually so forward in public—they're both still public figures and they _know_ what people will say about a former teacher and his student—but he couldn't help it. She'd smiled at him as he complimented her on their costumes in such a perfect way, he _couldn't help it)_; it's a very nice, flattering photograph, published in the spread Xenophilius did on Luna's wedding, but the public revelation of 'a long-suspected dalliance between werewolf leaders' (as Witch Weekly's gossip column put it) makes a mess. Lavender shrugs off the resulting scandal with a kind of bred elegance, but Remus vindictively goes over Lavender's house with a pest-killing spell after Rita Skeeter (_is she really not dead yet?_ he thinks spitefully) writes a nasty piece about Lavender with a particularly vicious side note on his "apparent taste for much younger witches and the wealthier, the better, regardless of physical condition" (it's the low jab at the scars everyone knows Lavender is hiding that spurs Remus into such anger).

She is impervious to the gossip until one of the rags runs something speculating on a pregnancy. Lavender sees it on a table at Florean's and she nearly turns the chair over as she leaps up. She Apparates home with Remus only a moment behind her. She tries to get rid of him at the door (seemingly forgetting that he lives here now, too) but he follows her in anyway, and she starts crying there in her entrance hall. Lavender cries in his arms, and he knows that this is not the first time she's cried over this. She speaks between her bouts of tears and Remus is sure that, of all the things that Fenrir Greyback stole from Lavender when he stole away the human life she should have had, that day years ago, this is the thing she will always regret most.

She will never bear children. No child will ever call her mother and this is more painful for her than any wound Greyback ever ripped across her flesh. Lavender is sure this is part of why Charlie left her—she would not bend. She refused to bring a child into the world when it would share her curse.

Remus aches to comfort her as she cries against his chest in the kitchen. "Teddy," he begins uncertainly. "I thought…he's not, Lavender. He's _not._" Lavender looks up at him and he would give anything to see hope in her eyes, but there is none.

"You didn't carry him, Remus." She turns away, her arms over her middle. "Nymphadora didn't become an animal every month while she carried him inside her." There is despair beyond description in her voice, despair and naked jealousy. She turns back to him, her long brown hair whipping over her shoulder. "How could any child I carried…when I'm a…they couldn't. _They couldn't," _she finishes, her stumbling replaced by a grim, hollow certainty. "What kind of mother would knowingly do that to her child? I'd be as bad as Greyback."

That he vehemently denies, berating her for even thinking to compare herself to that thing, that _monster _in the truest sense of the word. Remus tries again, hesitantly but he can't help himself. "It's not such a bad life we have," he says. He waits for it to feel like a lie, but somehow it isn't. This _isn't_ such a bad life anymore. It's not easy; it's painful and cruel and they've lost so much, but what life is without loss and pain? Perhaps they have known more than others, but they have known war…he wouldn't wish this curse on anyone, but it's better than no life at all, a thousand times so.

He almost asks Lavender if she would have preferred dying that day but he thinks better of it; it's different, he knows, and the thought of even saying those words aloud make him ill. That she would have never lived for him to know, never been his friend, never been anything more than a hazily remembered thirteen-year-old face to attach to the spidery handwriting on the essay she had written for Snape on werewolves, the essay that he still has, taped to his broken Registration tag in the bottom of his battered trunk, the essay that was useless if you wanted to know how to recognize a werewolf but precious to him with all her scattered, lyric teenaged ideas of 'unfair' and what it was to be a person and not an animal.

There's such a tiny light of hope in her eyes, but she stomps it out quickly, looking at him beseechingly. "Please don't, Remus. Please don't make me think like that. _Please._ Charlie almost had me with words like that and I don't think I can keep my head if _you_ keep on with that." She pauses, long and empty.

"I can't give you a child, I'm sorry. I just…I can't."

He almost says something terrible, something thoughtless. He almost says "I don't need that from you." The words are on his tongue and he stops them just in time, knowing immediately that she never would have forgiven him had they been spoken.

He means it in the best possible way. He loves her…_her,_ not anything she could ever do or give him. She needn't give him anything at all.

That is exactly what he meant, but she wouldn't have heard that. She would've heard that he doesn't need it from her because Nymphadora's already given him a son, that he has no need for what she desperately wants to give him, for what she wants so desperately for herself. He has a son who loves him; Teddy loves her, as well, but he will never call her mother, and Lavender cannot forget that.

Remus holds her while she shakes and cries, and hopes she's too distraught to notice his own trembling. He's afraid, because he's so sure that those words he almost spoke would have killed her stars again, hurt her beyond his ability to repair, beyond her capacity to forgive. He's never realized that he might snuff the stars out unintentionally, that constellations might fall through thoughtless words and actions, and he holds her tighter.

Remus takes Teddy back to Kings Cross after his Christmas holidays end, and the teenager rather bluntly asks him when he intends to marry Lavender. He doesn't really have an answer, so his son slaps him on the shoulder and tells him to get on it, "at least before I'm of age, or I'll ask her and I can be a younger, better-looking version of you, so who knows what she'll say?" before he jumps onto the Hogwarts Express with a uncharacteristically smug look about him.

He proposes to her on his birthday. It takes the weeks in between Kings Cross and then to get up the nerve; they've both had failed marriages and he worries she won't want to marry at all (he'll _never _do what Charlie did to her, he'll never kill those stars because no one's ever worn them for him). When he brings out the box she looks puzzled and reminds him it's _his_ birthday (although he sees her sneak a glance at his watch to check the date, wondering for just a tiny moment if she's managed to lose track of eight months). To be fair, the box was wrapped—perhaps he shouldn't have done that, but he's never really done this so he isn't sure; Nymphadora proposed to _him._ 10 March is a rainy, grey day and a rainy, grey night without a star to be seen in the sky, but there are stars in Lavender's eyes again, this time for him and he would give up every night of stars to an overcast sky (well, it _is_ England, but still) to keep them there.

He never gave a ring to Nymphadora, not like this. It had been so quick, jumping from that lamentable scene in the Hospital Wing to Dora looking so earnest and hopeful when she said "Well, really, why not get married?" No real ceremony, no rings but for the simple, plain gold bands on their fingers.

Remus gives Lavender his mother's ring, reclaimed only recently from where it sat in a rather bare, small Gringotts vault. Silvia's ring, which she gave to her son on the fifth anniversary of her husband's death and only short weeks before illness claimed her, is white-gold with small diamonds. It's not much, not at all like some of the fabulous jewelry Lavender inherited from her mother (Lavender has her picture in a frame on her vanity; Remus nearly chokes when he recognizes Christine Maudsley, a Pureblood Hufflepuff who'd been a year below him, and tries not to dwell overlong on the thought that Lavender's mother was younger than he) but she puts it on her finger immediately (she has to pull off the lavender-colored diamond set in platinum that she took to wearing on that finger after she removed the gold band that matched Charlie Weasley's) and smiles at him.

He thinks she'll want a small ceremony. She's a good ways past thirty, it _is_ her second wedding, as well, and she's marrying an old man, not something she'll want to be parading around celebrating. Remus suggests this to her as she's fixing dinner one night, and she turns around from the countertop with a look that reminds him who exactly he's marrying.

She plans a huge wedding and has her wedding dress (not in white, but in a pearly grey embroidered with delicate pink) designed, throwing all of the considerable energy and efficiency once dedicated to her now-defunct cause into her wedding. She plans and plots and stresses over minutiae (in the most graceful way possible) until the very moment she walks to him down the aisle. Lavender is the picture of serenity in her dove grey and he cannot quite believe she is walking to him, of all people.

With a magnanimity he did not think existed, Lavender invites Nymphadora and Charlie. They don't attend, but a letter will arrive from Remus' ex-wife in a few weeks, addressed to Lavender, a very lovely one of deep apology and congratulation (it's a little clumsy, as is Nymphadora's style, but it is so very sincere the Remus loves his ex-wife just for a minute for the way her letter brightens Lavender's face.)

When he asks her why she said yes, Lavender confesses that it never even entered her mind to refuse him, as they lay in bed listening to the waves on the South China Sea. Remus somehow already knows. Of all the (many, many) things he has been unsure of in his life, that Lavender Brown (Lupin, she's taking his name; Nymphadora was never Lupin, even married to Charlie now she is still Tonks, she never was his, she never wore his stars) loves him is not one of them. Stars are set again in the indigo sky and he would not rip them down for the world.

He thinks it might be chauvinistic, wrong somehow, to think her his in any way (he vividly remembers fourth year, when James sent Lily a valentine obnoxiously pleading 'be mine!' and she let him have it in the common room about women not belonging to anyone, least of all spoilt, useless snotrags), but he feels she is, from the stars in her eyes to the scars in her flesh, she belongs to him (just him) as no one ever has. Lavender is his dearest friend (as Nymphadora never was) and he loves her (not more than he loved James and Sirius and Peter once, but differently, _differently). _She breathes in his ear one night, their last night in this honeymoon bed in Indonesia, she breathes _'mine' _in his ear as she falls apart beneath him.

One hand is splayed across his shoulder, the other threaded through his hair (mostly grey, now) and her neck is curled up off the bed, her (flawlessly smooth) cheek pressed up against his. Remus Lupin will gladly belong to Lavender (to his _wife_, it's such a pretty word for this woman) because she belongs to him as well.

Fifteen-year-old Victoire Weasley is a rock star in the making, and seventeen-year-old Teddy, who is about as suave as his mother and father rolled together (which is not very) fancies the pants off her. Teddy Lupin receives his very first detention (ever, he's always been a good little boy who can keep his limited trouble-making under wraps) when he punches David Gaines, a Gryffindor in his year, after David calls the eldest Weasley girl 'Vic-twat' after a failed date. Teddy is more heartbroken by Victoire's subsequent lambasting of him for trying to baby her (they are in detention together—she's placidly ignoring him and he's crushed—and while Teddy is only serving a week's worth for managing to bloody David's nose, Victoire's in for a month for breaking it outright and then hexing him senseless.)

Remus sometimes worries if this girl is a little bit out of his (rather gentle, good-hearted Hufflepuff) son's league. The veela blood, even so far diluted, is obvious in her too-beautiful-for-fifteen face; genetics was trying very hard to make her a Weasley red-head but the Veela blonde would not go quietly, so Victoire ended up with a rather dark shade of gold-blonde that favors neither of her parents. She streaks it with crimson and makes a pretty Gryffindor picture (if McGonagall were still around Hogwarts, she'd be throwing a fit over Victoire; butterfly hairclips are child's play). She plays the guitar, wears too much eyeliner, rolls her uniform skirts (worn with big, buckled black boots) and breaks noses and hearts. Her mother weeps beautiful, dignified tears and dresses her younger daughters in pink and lace, and her father loves too much to see his lost handsome features in her face (she looks like he did before Greyback—or would have had Bill had veela blood to sensationalize his already good looks) to do anything but laugh at her behavior and chalk it up to the Weasley Temper.

Remus mourns his son's heart to his wife (to Lavender, his _wife_, he still wonders at the word) and she simply smiles. "If she breaks it, she breaks it. If not her, then someone else. Or maybe not at all. Let him learn, Remus."

And she knows about broken hearts (and by Weasleys best of all), so he listens. He's had his broken, too, but it's not quite the same, losing Lily and James and Sirius (and Peter, he loved him once, as well—sometimes it feels as though losing Peter is the most ripping of all his grief; he knows he'll see the others again, they're waiting for him somewhere so they can all be together…but it will never be the same. That friend who hung on the edges with him, the one with whom he felt some unspoken sort of kinship in their otherness…it seems like the forever kind of lost).

When Teddy comes home for the summer (it's back to Lavender's house now, because it's his house now, too) and begins to pin up letters written in stark black capital letters and drawn over with colored accents and woven with songs lyrics written for him, Lavender merely smiles at Remus while Teddy scrambles at the small black owl that is tapping at the window, nearly tipping over his cereal bowl in the dash.

First love goes easier for his son, and Remus loves Victoire for treading carefully in her big black boots. They make a rather awkward picture (even though Teddy tries to emulate Victoire in her punk-rock glory, she informs him rather bluntly that he looks ridiculous and that she's not dating him so he can show her up with his metamorphmagery) but there are new little stars in two pairs of brown eyes and Victoire wears a tender, goofy sort of smile when she think no one's looking. It's not at all becoming, but Remus likes to see it because it means that this hard-edged girl won't be stomping any hearts in the near future.

A few years later, Lavender finds more stars for her eyes in the form a newborn baby girl, born in St. Mungo's to a werewolf woman who promptly disappears. The little girl is perfect, ten fingers and toes and not a mark on her perfect new skin, but she is just as cursed as all the rest of them and she's already been a wolf nine times before she was even born. Justin Finch-Fletchley, one of the head Healers, immediately Floos Lavender when they realize why the mother took off so quickly.

Lavender is lost (and Remus can see it) the moment she picks up that little girl who has no one in the world. He has doubts (he's getting _old, _his own son is grown but he knows that he cannot deny Lavender this (because she has craved it for _so long_ with everything she has, there's no one else to care for this abandoned little girl, and he's not sure what she'd do if he told her 'no').

His doubts disappear three nights in. The little girl (they name her Silvia Christine, after their mothers) fusses in the night and he quickly jumps out of bed (to spare Lavender, sprawled ungracefully beside him; she hasn't slept since they brought Silvia home, she's too wired with disbelief that this little girl belongs to her, now)

Remus hasn't really held Silvia all that much, really. Lavender holds her every waking moment and then stands curled protectively over her cot when Silvia sleeps. This is the first time in three days that Lavender's slept (passed out from exhaustion might be a better description) and the first time Remus has had a moment alone with his new daughter (he has a daughter? Sometimes he can't believe this life).

Silvia is smaller than Teddy was. She quiets when he picks her up from the cot, her light green eyes big in her impossibly tiny face as she regards this person holding her. He seems to pass inspection, because she worms around a bit in his arms, curling into the warmth and falling back asleep.

He doesn't put her down. He's in love again. Sitting down in the rocking chair (brand new, this whole nursery, Lavender went mad the day before St. Mungo's released Silvia to them; it's a perfect fairyland of ivy green, deep rose, and antique gold) he holds her until morning, in awe (again) of this little girl (daughter, _his daughter)_ that Lavender has brought into his life.

And it may not be the sort of family Charlie Weasley wanted from her so long ago, but this family she's helped him make is perfect in his eyes.

Possibly the only person more thrilled about Silvia than he (Lavender's out of the competition, the little girl is the beginning and end of her world) is Teddy, who is giddy beyond dignity about his newest little sister. He's the most successful of any of them when it comes to distracting Silvia from tears; it's hard to compete with an eager young man who can change his hair and make the most literal silly faces in existence. He's enamored of his infant sister (Silvia is never put down, between her parents and her brother) going on and on about babies until Victoire starts to look a little nervous. She's only twenty-one and they way Teddy is going on is slightly unsettling for a girl who plans to outstrip The Weird Sisters' album sales by age twenty-five.

When Teddy's about to turn twenty-four, he asks Victoire to marry him. Remus coaches him for weeks (with limited knowledge, although Teddy agrees that wrapping the ring box seems like a perfectly reasonable idea) and Lavender frets over whether Victoire is going to want a "dreadful" wedding with loud, terrible music and some white-leather dress, or (preferably) she just won't care at all and leave it to Fleur.

They needn't have worried at all, because Teddy comes back with broken stars and the ring box clutched in his hand. "She says she's not sure she ever wants to get married," he tells them brokenly, his eyes dry and dull. "No kids, either. She's sure about that. She'd rather just be an auntie."

"Is it…over, then?" Lavender asks him gently, setting down a mug of tea in front of her stepson.

"Yes," he says, a little more strength in his voice. "I want those things, and it would be foolish to hang about hoping she'll change her mind someday. I love her, but—she doesn't want what I want. I left her."

Silvia is more demanding than any activist campaign, and, for the first time ever, Remus sees Lavender looking less than perfectly-manicured. Her outfits are no longer so smart and well-accessorized (most could pass for pyjamas, really), her hair is more often than not still damp from a quick-scrub shower and thrown up into a messy bun, and she hasn't had time to apply makeup since she brought Silvia home. She looks more beautiful than ever, even when she's pulling herself out of bed at four in the morning to feed a howling Silvia, because she is so wonderfully happy that it seems to set the air around her with a golden, effervescent glow (so maybe she isn't quite _glowing_ at four in the morning, but she gets up with a minimum of complaints).

Silvia is a surprise baby to a group of people who thought they were all done with babies until grandchildren came into the picture. She has no other babies with whom to compete for attention, and there are very few who don't want a turn at holding her. She's passed around from person to person at Weasley family gatherings (even though Lavender no longer bears the name, both she and Remus are honorary Weasley family), cooed over and petted until Lavender's nervous twitching next to him gets to be too much and Remus takes her back and his wife flashes him a private, grateful smile.

They're sitting at the kitchen table in dressing robes one morning, Remus reading The Daily Prophet over tea while Lavender attempts to spoon some rice cereal and strained plums into a struggling Silvia (and unless babies can diffuse nutrients through the skin of their cheeks, it seems a rather futile effort at this point).

It's not really much, just a 'mmmmmmuh!' sound that seems to mean, "Mum, stop that, I've had enough" but when she repeats it ("Muh! Muh!") Lavender drops the spoon. Elated at having produced the desired effect, Silvia keeps up, flailing her little fists in triumph and reaching out for her mother to pick her up.

Lavender throws herself on top of Remus and kisses him hard, barely able to pull her face out of the stretched grin to do it properly. "Listen!" she says, as Silvia obligingly continues her mantra. And she looks at him gleefully, wonder and pride in her eyes. "She's trying to say mum. _I'm_ her mum!"

Silvia doesn't really resemble either of them; she's going to be tall, he thinks, a tall girl with sage-green eyes and caramel-blonde hair. Lavender puts her into a ballet class at five, and for the first six weeks Silvia takes off her pink dance slippers for bath and bed only. Remus naively asks Lavender why she lets their daughter wear the slippers all the time. "I tried once to take them off her. If you care to see why I stopped at one attempt, by all means, you give it a go," she tells him dryly, kissing his cheek and tossing Silvia's pink satin dance bag into the backseat of her new Jaguar (it's an updated version of the model Remus talked her out of that day years ago, forest green and sleek as its namesake).

"You pick your battles wisely. If she wants to wear those things with her velvet party dress, argyle socks, and a magenta tea-cosy on her head, I'll be damned if I'm going to stop her." She says this, but he can see it pains her a little. She's back to her impeccable self, after a few exhausting years, and Silvia's closet is filled with perfectly lovely little outfits and shiny pairs of shoes. Silvia prefers to fashion herself outfits that would make a house-elf proud.

Remus appreciates his mother and father all the more, having experienced what it is to raise a werewolf child. The days leading up to the full moon are increasingly bad. Remus and Lavender are, by now, used to the restless animal rising up in them when the not-quite-full moon shines (those nights are a lot more pleasant with Lavender, it's nearly impossible for them to keep their hands off each other).

Silvia graduates from her endless, inconsolable screaming. They tried the first few months to hold and comfort her (and cease the shrill infant scream perfectly engineered to set their teeth on edge), but in the end, there was nothing to do but muffle her noise. Lavender cried helpless tears the first night they left her to scream herself out (not a pleasant night; Lavender alternated between quoting passages of parenting books on a child's need to learn self-comfort in an effort to assuage her guilt and standing by the door and crying).

Now that she can talk and walk, the moon causes half-sleep nightmares and Silvia restlessly wanders the house when the dreams wake her, usually ending with a tentative knock at their bedroom door.

It's a special kind of torture, Remus thinks, to lay in bed with your beautiful young wife, a squirming restless child in between, when all you can think of is how magnificent she looked five minutes ago, underneath you and begging. Silvia is twisting around in her little green pyjamas, half asleep, and Lavender is on her back next to her, staring at the ceiling; her hand is in his, joined over Silvia's head, and her fingers are restlessly tapping on his.

Near dawn, Silvia passes out and Lavender drags him into the bathroom, triple locks the door (all of Silvia's accidental magic seems to be getting her into places she really needn't be and walking in on this is a childhood horror they'd like to spare her, not to mention themselves) nearly rips off his pajamas and pulls him into the shower with her.

"I am a dirty, out-of-control whore," she says to him, sanity temporarily restored. They're awkwardly sitting in the shower stall under the hot stream of water, curled up together and exhausted (in more ways than one).

"We'll need to keep a close eye on Silvia before the full moon, when she's older," Remus tells her, dragging his hand through her heavy wet fall of silvering hair. "If she's as desperately filthy as her mother."

She murmurs something against his neck that might be 'shut up' (most likely something less polite), but it gets lost in the noise of falling water.

Teddy meets Katherine Ollivander when they take Silvia for her first wand at age eleven. She's twenty-seven years old and Silvia's is the very first wand she ever made; poplar and phoenix feather. She's the sole proprietress of the Diagon Alley shop, a distant American great _(-great-great-great_, Remus suspects) niece of old Mr. Ollivander and the only member of her family with the wandmaking gift (she has the same moon-like eyes and he wonders if that's some sort of tell).

Kitty is not much like the distant relation who willed the shop to her. There's not much of that eerie, ephemeral quality around her when she peeks out from behind the shelves and smiles softly at them, but perhaps her quiet serenity will become that with age and experience. She's almost hesitant to present Silvia with the poplar wand, even though they've gone through dozens and everyone's getting a bit frustrated.

"I've never sold one of mine," she says quietly, almost shyly. "But none of these seem to be working, so…" She produces another box from the back.

It is a very beautiful wand, the handle carefully carved with a delicate floral scroll pattern, and Remus can see careful pride in Kitty's eyes as she hands it over. "Poplar and phoenix feather, see how…" There's a wide smile on Silvia's face and a vine of purple flowers wraps itself around the wand. "…it works," Kitty finishes happily, a pleased blush on her face.

Teddy, who has been regarding the shop's proprietress more and more interestedly as his sister's wand fitting drags on, hangs around the shop after Lavender pays for Silvia's new wand and she and Remus follow a gleefully-dancing Silvia back into the street. When they leave Diagon Alley a few hours later, he's managed to invite her out to dinner.

The summer before her third year, Silvia dances (she even makes walking like a dance) down the aisle at Teddy's wedding. Kitty is beautiful in white, her black hair swept up, and Remus sees for the first time the agelessness in her face as she says her vows in her soft, steady way. She is a very powerful witch (all wandmakers are, their gifts are exceptionally rare and precious) and she will live a very long life (the old wandmaker was, by all account, older even than Dumbledore—he had sold him his very first wand). Kitty knows (Remus sees it in her eyes) that she will outlive Theodore Remus Lupin, live perhaps the span of another lifetime without him.

And still Katherine Elaine Ollivander-Lupin smiles a brilliant, ageless smile as she vows to love and honor Teddy for the rest of her life. Remus considers that smile on her face (and he's sure Teddy does as well) worth every heartbreak his son has ever known.

Silvia grows up, grows beautiful and strong. Teddy has children. Remus watches the age creep into Lavender's face, sees it settle more deeply into his own when he looks in the mirror (he doesn't mind, really. It almost seems like a gift, to grow old and to watch Lavender follow him).

Even though she expressed doubt, Victoire Weasley eventually marries her drummer (they've overtaken The Weird Sisters and Victoire is a true rock princess; Teen Witch Weekly commit an entire issue to the wedding, which is not quite as 'dreadful' as Lavender once imagined). Remus' youngest granddaughter, Andromache, is almost three by then (she looks like a Black, with her black hair and moon-grey eyes—it's Kitty's Ollivander blood that makes her eyes so grey and her hair so black, undoubtedly, but there's a certain aristocratic angle to her face that can only come from Great-Grandmother Andromeda's Black blood and Remus can see Sirius a little when Andromache smiles a certain way). Teddy is so happy with gentle Kitty that when he sends his congratulations to his first love, he is entirely sincere.

Silvia dances down the aisle in her own wedding, and Remus walks beside her to keep her from floating away in happiness. Aidan Kane is eleven years her senior at thirty-six (when Silvia brought him home, he could see the "say something, I dare you" look in his daughter's eyes; she's an unbearably sassy, stubborn little thing) but she wears her stars for him and he _would_ be an unbearable hypocrite to say anything (he can hear Silvia in his head: "And _how old_ was Mum when _you_ were thirty-six? _When_ were you her teacher? Did you want to marry her then?")

Lavender's long hair (she's never changed it, not once in the more than half-century he's known her; it still hangs straight to the centre of her back, the same as it did at thirteen) has faded entirely to silver, but the color looks beautiful against the champagne of her dress, and she's quietly crying when Remus gives Silvia away and returns to sit next to her. Her hands are older, but the familiar scars are still on them and they still fit perfectly into his.

She turns sixty-six a few months after Silvia's wedding. She doesn't seem sixty, but he certainly feels eighty.

Remus, when he was twenty-two and alone in the world, did not want to be the survivor. He cannot recall all the many times he wished the war had taken him, too, that he had never lived to see Lily and James fall and all that came after to rip his world apart. He doesn't regret living anymore, (he did, once, in those long years he spent alone) but he's starting to wonder about the end.

Lavender finds him sometimes, deep in contemplation over a cold cup of chocolate or tea, and she smiles and teases him about senility before he pulls her down to curl up against him. The stars in her eyes are still bright and unfading, and Remus is content to let heaven wait a little longer (because he's not really loved Lavender long enough, he still has time to give her).

When Lavender falls ill, it feels like the world is ending (it _is_ ending, she made this world for him and she's _dying;_ how can it do anything but die with her?

It's an effect of long-term Wolfsbane use, the Healers say. It's a poison, really, they tell Remus, and years of use are going to have adverse effects somewhere.

Of course Remus isn't ill. That would be too kind. Lavender fades and Remus grows frantic.

"What are you getting all fussed about?" Lavender asks him, curled up against his side one morning. "I'm eighty years old; it's been a good long life and the way Harry tells it, being dead sounds pretty brilliant. This Wolfsbane Syndrome isn't a bad way to go; I'm not really sick, I'm just really tired and one day I won't wake up. Better than a ruddy great mess on the entrance hall floor sixty years ago, that's for certain."

He can't stand listening to her talk like that. His hand finds hers, curled together on his chest. "I'll be alone again, I'm tired of surviving."

She kind of half-laughs, rubbing along his gnarled hand with her thumb. "Quit mourning me, I'm not dead yet. And, er, if you haven't looked in a mirror lately, you _are_ a hundred. Not like you're going to have huge spans of time in which to exist without me." There's a long moment of quiet. "And if, by some miracle, you outlive both your children, Kitty will put up with you. If you think you're going to outlive Kitty, you're sadly mistaken. Go bother her until you kick it, if you must, or Andromache and the Potter boy she's living in sin with, or…well, you get it. You're never going to be alone."

She's quiet for a long time; she's getting tired, he can tell, and there's a little bit of grief in her voice when she says, "I've given you that, Remus, and you've given it to me, too. We're never alone."

The Healers come by a few days later. They want her in St. Mungo's, but she flat-out refuses. "I can die just as well in my own bed, thank you," she says crisply, propped up in their great bed, her midnight-blue silk robe carefully arranged around her.

She sleeps most of the day, and the few hours she spends awake, she's a bit lethargic and unfocused. Remus is losing her, and he doesn't know how to prepare. He thinks it must be easier to lose someone like this, rather than to wake up one morning to Minerva McGonagall on your doorstep with news that the world was saved (but that didn't matter because everything you loved in it was gone). It doesn't seem easier, watching Lavender fade so quickly, watching her eyes drop close and her words taper off as the increasing exhaustion overtakes her and she falls asleep.

Silvia sobs brokenly as she says her goodbyes to Lavender, and Teddy can barely choke out the words. Teddy's children come, and Andromache tells her grandmother about the baby she's expecting with Jamie Potter (and they're getting married, really). Remus still won't say his. For him to say goodbye means it's really the end, and if somehow he never says the words, she'll never have to go.

One night as he's curling up against her, she wakes momentarily, just enough to murmur, "Heaven's going to be wonderful. I can't wait to meet them, they loved you. Don't be sad." She smiles at him, her hand smoothing down his face.

Lavender sounds a little dizzy; there's that air in her voice suggesting she's slightly less than lucid, but there are still stars in her eyes when she looks at him, unsullied by illness and exhaustion. He cries into her hair as she sleeps, curling his arms around her and pulling her against him.

He dreams of stars that night and never wakes.

* * *

I'm not that cruel. As of 21-10-2007, there's an epilogue posted next. :) 


	4. Epilogue

Stars Fall, Epilogue

It's really done now, and I'm a little sad because I really really loved writing it. This pairing is probably not dead. I like it too much. :) I hope you've enjoyed reading as much as I've loved writing it

* * *

His office smells like books and dust and dirty aquarium tanks (everything like he remembers). There are papers scattered everywhere, and Lavender's sitting on the desk (never ever in a chair), a paper in her hands. She looks up when he opens the door, a smile curling on her Rose-Vision-lipsticked mouth. "Way to steal my thunder, Remus. Of course I couldn't have my cinematic deathbed scene. No!"

Lavender frowns theatrically, her arms crossed over her chest. He just shrugs at her, grinning broadly. "Not like I planned on that massive stroke in my sleep."

"And after all that 'oh, I'm cursed to live _forever_' drivel you subjected me to, you have the nerve to die in _my_ deathbed." She grins, leaning in to shake her head at him (he wonders how he managed for the eternity—or was it just a moment?—he'd just spent without her). "I got you back. I keeled over at your funeral. I insisted on going and fell out of my chair ten minutes in. Died right there. So_ ha_."

He looks around. People don't choose places for no reason…they always mean something. "What are we doing here?"

She shrugs, shaking her head. "Dunno. Guess it reminded me of you." She sniffs, wrinkling her nose at the dust and disarray. "Before I cleaned you up." She smiles, that perfect wide happy smile. The paper in her hand is familiar, and Remus recognizes it. "I didn't even know you'd ever seen this. You kept it," she half-whispers.

It's her essay on werewolves, arguing the biggest way to tell between a wolf and a werewolf is whether, after the moon sets, the creature in question turns into a human for the rest of the month. There's a heavy implication of 'duh' behind her words (the paper almost drips with it, in a way that only a thirteen-year-old author could convey); what other differences matter? One's a human most of the time and one's not. Humans are humans and it's not their fault if they happen to turn into something else once a month. Imperius victims aren't held accountable for the actions taken by some third party through them, why should any werewolf?

To tell the truth, (now it doesn't seem so wrong to admit) it was reading this paper that Remus first loved Lavender Brown. Long before Fenrir Greyback had ever ruined her human life, long before she'd borne those scars with grace, long before he'd ever really known her, the thirteen-year-old Lavender had still had a compassionate and understanding heart (and a teenage girl's keen concept of 'completely unfair').

She sets the paper down. "I've got a lot of things to tell you. Everyone got all morbid after you kicked it without proper notice. 'Tell Remus this, Lavender, when you're dead, tell him that.'"

"I'd rather just talk to you right now. It feels like forever since I've seen you." He still hasn't managed to walk over to her. She seems too real.

"Three days. I can't say I got too fussed over you dying, although waking up to your dead body wrapped around me was slightly…creepy. I felt bad, everyone was getting all weepy and if I'd had the energy I would've been dancing on your grave." She shrugs a little as if in apology.

"Now, that's love," he tells her, smiling and she laughs. He looks her over. "Lavender, most people put on clothes before this point." (Not that he minds, really.)

She laughs, tossing her long brown hair over her shoulder. "I'm wearing _something._" In his opinion, the lavender-and-white-lace lingerie she's wearing doesn't really count as 'something.' Her eyes sparkle as she looks back at him. "I'm beautiful again. As far as I'm concerned, this is as much as I'm going to wear ever again." She grins, getting off the desk and holding out her hand.

He takes her smooth, young hand into his own. The scars she's worn for so long have faded, gone with the silver of her hair and lines engraved in her face. "You were always beautiful," he tells her (he's never meant words more in his…ever). His hand brushes against the more generous curve of her smooth-skinned hip—he couldn't care less about her flawless white skin (it's almost strange to him, to see her so free and careless in her skin, and if she didn't laugh the same, if she didn't still smell of her expensive perfume, if her hand didn't fit so well in his own, if her stars didn't shine so familiarly, he might not know her), but she's so happy to be beautiful for him that he has to appreciate it.

"Now I can believe you a little when you tell me I'm a goddess," she smiles, getting off the desk and holding out her hand. "And speaking of beautiful," she says brightly, "Not bad! Twenty-one suits you."

"I don't think I ever called you a 'goddess'," Remus protests, reddening slightly. "It sounds rather…tawdry."

She ducks her head to his shoulder, laughing (he doesn't think she ever laughed this much in life; she's not even got there and heaven already suits her). "I counted twice. Both times I will not fault you for not remembering…I was making a huge distraction of myself in both instances."

He blushes (so maybe that word fell out at some point, he said a lot of ridiculous things when she was…_making a distraction of herself_). He shakes it off. "Really, Lavender, you might want to put some clothes on. I don't think you want to see your parents looking like that."

She wears a lavender and white-lace dress that flows around her when she walks. After she's smoothed the fabric over her hips (she's not so terribly skinny anymore, the sharp angles in her face and frame have smoothed out) she pauses, looking over at him.

"So," she says softly. There's a little bit of curiosity in her voice, a little uncertainty. But there is no fear. "What's it like?"

He can't really think of any word to explain (there aren't any, really; it's beyond words) but he tries.

"It's like…stars." He shrugs a little helplessly (he's lost for words and he so wants to tell her how…just how…) holding out his hand again. "I think you just have to…" (not see) "…feel it."

Lavender's hand curls into his, and her starry indigo eyes meet his for a moment. "Stars…" she smiles peacefully, her eyes still locked on his. "Maybe I know a little bit, then."


End file.
